Nigh-Deific Green Dragon * Note: The Great Green God doesn't go for any of that "stat" stuff. Consider him "unstatted" in the White Wolf/World of Darkness sense of the word.

Ouch, hope you're up and about soon. My brother-in-law had that done a few years back (he played ice hockey). So if you are a hockey player here's hoping you got to drop the gloves and overbear the other person (especially since you're the beatstick of our particular party).

Thank you though for the Help, If anyone has any tips for me feel free to share

This sort of depends on were you plan to go with this, but I would suggest staying away from the small presses at first and aim for the top. Literally anyone can produce a decent pdf these days and as Brekkil mentioned the pay schedule and rate ain't so hot on the lower tiers -actually- let's be truthful here, the starting freelance rate for anything gaming related sucks compared to working for any other periodical this side of your high school's newspaper and, AND! The publishing world at large would probably look more kindly on you for the high school gig. This is a labor of love, not money.

I suggest making sure you have the means to indulge in game design (whatever part of the field you are in) before you start. Because for the most part you will be losing money. Remember your basic math: Time = Money, which means the reverse is also true. You have got to invest a lot of time in the trenches for very little if any pay before you even have the chance of making money in the field - and then you won't have time to spend it because you'll always be working - and when you do spend it it'll be on the next game mechanic source book.

How much overtime do you suppose the Paizo editor's pull?

As for college, I would look into some scholarships or grants - because even a year or two of actual university-level English is better than none. If you were taking AP classes you should qualify for something.

Partners in Crime. Pretty well done actually. One of Russell's better scripts (this from a guy who didn't like a lot of his season 1 and 2 stuff). It much lighter than some of the previous stories making it a nice change of pace and perfect for reintroducing Donna. Loved the evil Mary Poppins (who can't quite fly on her own) riff, the cubical scene, Donna's grandfather missing the alien invasion, and the other previously mentioned laugh out loud moments. All in all a fun watch.

As to those of you who didn't like, all I have to say is that I'm reporting you for madness.

;)
GGG

So Vic what did you think? This is a "series 4" thread not a "4th ed." thread so I expect some Paizo Whovians to stop by. ;)

Just write and publish your own, and then wait for the money to come flooding in!

I've considered becoming an E-publisher just so I can charge people ;>

I read on Enworld that 100 copies sold is actually quite a good run for an e-publisher ;<

It's true the RPG industry is shrinking faster than a Polar Bear Club member in January. The only way to fight back is to take the time to teach someone else the game (preferably someone who still has Summer vacation). Young kids can learn so much from Role-Playing, stuff you just don't get with your WOW subscription.

Oh, and thanks for ruining my night of At the Mountains of Madness last night, Pett. Lovecraft starts talking about Mnar and all of a sudden all I can think of is the insane, nonsensical messageboard ramblings of some crazy old Brit.

1765th Post Whoohoo! Such an accomplishment deserves a day off from work. Heh, who am I kidding I already have the day off.

Anyhow, I felt compelled to post on this thread for more than just sentiment. Turns out that an actual "Black Hole" (No Hags allowed) adventure of mine made it to "print" in the Neo-Digital-Dungeon. Witching Season finally hit the public after bouncing back and forth between the WotC and Paizo offices. Get it while it's free!

Are there any other Black Hole projects swirling out there in the void? Let us know because we are only a few months away from the event horizon, at which point they all get compacted down into 4e!

Reality Deviant Publications, a publisher of quality gaming products, is pleased to announce the launch of an exciting new True20 cyberpunk setting - Interface-Zero - late this Spring with a host of support material and adventures to follow. Each book in the series is penned by Werecabbage and Paizo Community faves!

ABOUT REALITY DEVIANT PUBLICATIONS
Reality Deviant Publications is also the proud producer of the Blood Throne Campaign setting, one of the winners of Green Ronin’s True20 setting search. Visit the RDP website at http://www.realitydeviants.net/.

ABOUT WERECABBAGE PUBLISHING
WereCabbage Publishing brings together more than three dozen of the most successful and promising writers, artists and cartographers in the hobby gaming industry. Visit the WCP website at http://www.werecabbages.com/.

Despite GM Gems already being Goodman's #2 selling product and RPGnow's #7 download Paizo is still waiting on a first review. I'm hoping someone will chime in and opine about how this book is so incredibly dense, inspired and consistent, though all that is really only a secondary selling point when you score Kate Beckinsale for the centerfold. She's reclining against a dire bearskin rug wearing only freshly plucked cabbage leaves upon her tinglies. WTG Zherog on that last minute celebrity connection!

GGG - Congrats on getting "Witching Season" published, and thanks for your support. If/when my Side Trek gets published, I'll be back here to talk some more about it. You might be interested in it since its plot focuses on a piece of fluff from an old TSR campaign world that I believe you're a fan of.

New Jersey! Oh you might mean Mystara too I suppose. ;)

Profession Smith 6 ranks wrote:

I'm looking forward to "Witching Season" for a couple of reasons. First, it most interested me of the adventures hinted at in the Issue #153 blurb. Second, January was a very sparse month for content for online Dungeon.

Well somehow I think cover-boy Steve Greer is going to take the top spot with his high-level adventure, which probes the interior of an impregnable phallus -well actually it's a fortress set in the midst of the negative energy plane, but that's what we where calling around the table at Gen Con last year. It features a special guest villain who ranks as one of the best-known baddies in the history of the game.

Good luck if you play in it, or "Witching Season" for that matter, both are pretty old school killers that don't always play fair. "Season" for instance runs a bit like a Call of Cthulhu game, minus the squiggly horrors beyond comprehension. Nope all the evil here is perfectly human even if the perpetrators are slightly less than.

Back to SideTreks, though...I think we'll see them sooner rather than later in the new online version of Dungeon. IIRC, the plan is to add new content every 3 days or so, and something short like a SideTrek should be easier to produce quickly. So even if Last Rogue or I never hear back about our queries, I can't help but think we're going to see a SideTrek posted online fairly soon. Then we'll see if/how the Delve Format gets implemented with it.

Well, the first e-Dungeon Side Trek ("Teleport Gone Awry" by David Noonan) is finally up on D&D Insider. I think I actually sort of like the Delve format with Side Treks, since they're so short they eliminate most of the page-flipping problem of the format in large books/modules.

On a personal note, I got a green light on my Side Trek proposal in mid-November (about 90 days after I sent it in) and submitted the finished submission last month. Now I'm in the second half of the waiting process (60-90 days?) to see if it'll get accepted for publication.

Oh and for an example of a Side Trek...not quite a Side Trek but damn close. GGG's The Menagerie (Dungeon #126). If you stripped that down to about half the different encounters and then maybe had them more mixed together as the players entered (say several in the main room with more entering shortly after combat starts) then that would be a Side Trek.

I love that thread. Kudos to MiKe for writing it (and "Final Resting Place" and "Beast of Burden" and "Home under the Range" and "Imprisoned with the Pharaohs" and "Paradise Lost" - okay, that was John Milton but MiKe could have pulled that off too if he had too), the guy is all class. It was a lot fun to run with him in the party.

James Jacobs wrote:

I'll certainly be interested to see if the online version of Dungeon manages to bring short adventures back to prominence, but with them using the delve format for those adventures, writing short adventures is probably gonna be even harder.

Warning, plug to follow: "Witching Season," which I believe made it to the Paizo semi-regular adventure proposal meeting right about the time the "No Hag" rule hit barring it from serious competition, makes it's online debut this month in the DI version of Dungeon. It was originally pitched to you guys as a 5,000 word adventure - it's about 15,000 now.... Now granted that could just be me again. It frightens me to think what would have happened had they accepted "Garden of Wonders."

GGG
PS I hope those of you who read "Witching Season" like it. Actually I hope those of you who don't read it, like it as well, and speak of it often. ;)

2. Brand Recognition - The words (or implication of): "Based on the Popular Video Game" should be taken as a threat. The same goes for "Based on the Popular Independent Comic Book" (see Ultraviolet if you dare).

Actually, Ultraviolet is not based on any comic. You may be thinking of Aeon Flux.

I didn't think much of Ultraviolet the first time I watched it. But I find I can stand it better on rewatches, especially when I read up on the director's concept of Gun Kata and knew what to look for action wise. I think it slightly unfair to compare Ultraviolet to Bloodrayne in any way shape or form.

Incidentally, much better than Ultraviolet (IMO) is Kurt Wimmer's previous film Equilibrium. It doesn't get universally good reviews but I tend to really like it.

I think that it is almost worse that it is not based on something other than the writer/director's own action scene fetish. Still it is a baaaaaad movie.

I'm sorry but in that scene where she touches her belt to use the relative gravity device and then we plunge into this shot of the inside of the device which looked a bit like the core of the Death Star left me thinking that Milla Jovovich's character has the most powerful womb in the universe. Really that was not Gun Kata (I've seen good gun kata), but unless we're talking slapstick gun kata... well it was just sort sad.
Every guy with an automatic weapon (whose range is obviously measured in inches because that's how close they had to get to use 'em) kept running in from 20 feet away to get killed with a sword. Symbolism was a bit hammer to the forehead as well. Also I find it a shame that you can only tell movie vampires nowadays by the fact they wear colorless outfits and carry guns. And what was up with the Chinese guys on the roof? We are neither human nor hemopile-of-whatever, but we still die with great ease and no story point. The last time I saw a firing squad in the round it was on Benny Hill. There's more but the memories are kinda scary.

I'm sorry but this was a bad, bad, bad movie. Underworld gets an Oscar, a Grammy, an Emmy, a Pulitzer and the Stanley Cup compared to this mess. Everyone if you haven't seen it don't I'm warning you! A zombie invasion would be preferable.

I'll give the director the bennie of a doubt, but only because I have heard good things about Equilibrium and because a director can make a mistake (Superman Returns for instance BLECH!!!), but still have made good movies. I give it a -1 out of 10. You could not pay me to sit through that again. I only went because a friend was interested in it, but I so wanted to walk out or at the very least MST3k it to death, but to spare everyone's feelings I ended up settling in for torture with the idea that I would have to see another movie that day just to wash the memories away. Longest 88 minutes in my life. And then I saw V for Vendetta and felt far better. Though it was kinda strange to see someone else do essentially the same movie only so much better one right after the other. I won't compare it to Blood Rayne or AeonFlux because I haven't seen those - and probably won't.

So don't see it! Or at the very least don't pay to see it. It's got a worse script than Attack of the Clones (I think I just vomited a little in my mouth).

The concept of a fungus that turns a living creature into a sloppy fungus-like monster is nothing new for the game... things like vegepygmies and yellow musk creeper zombies come to mind (even though a yellow musk creeper isn't technically a fungus...)...

SO! What about other, more obscure monsters from d20 sources who are fungus monsters? What's your favorite?

Aside from campestri, migo and myconids all on my short list of favored fungi, I would have to point to Sehan (the substance, the god, or the flavor of Kool-Aid, you decide) as my favorite. Not only are the children of Sehan (Dungeon 145) as soothing to have around as the campestri, but they are more threatening than the shroomfolk, and as Lovecraftian as the migo being 'themselves' (if such a word is appropriate) extensions of a living god. Also, while they are green they are definitely parasitic after a fashion while in the short term they may seem to be symbiotic. Still I'm not sure they/it could be considered a proper fungus by our rather limited knowledge of the universal standard of such things, though my yak folk masters tell me that they let it slide.

-Tam
Scribe of the Pagoda of the Inscrutable Ones

PS On that note the Cult of Sehan is the only religious movement that consistently can show you actual physical proof that its members have in fact really become one with god.

My resolution to the other gamers who take ages to look up the spell on their turn (and not before while they are waiting):

All Players have a fixed amount of time to state what they will do. In low levels this is one minute and in higher levels up to 3 minutes. If the player is not able to state what he will do in this time he looses his round (PC is confused by all the stuff going on).
That makes players think fast and act fast.
Rules' questions and stuff like this do not count towards the reaction time.

This is the sort of thing that if taken too far (say a five second count) really starts skewing the game away from those who might want to join in, but are perhaps too intimidated by the rules of the game - and D&D has a ton of those, and not all of them are even all that rational. Eventually Darwinism wins out and you've got what you always wanted: power gamers at every table. There are a lot of what I would call design flaws with every version of the game that contribute to some degree of slowness, the basic rules system being the biggest. Computer games on the other hand take most of the tedious rule learning out of the player's hands allowing them to explore the game more freely, though no computer setting has yet to eclipse the world created by a good GM.

Doc, I hate to say this but I think the removal of the Gnome didn't get as much backlash as you seem to believe.

No backlash for me! Now I can finally flush my toilet again. Thank you Gnome Removal Man.

Gnome Removal Man that's the way
Flush that toilet gnome down the drain.

Now in New Minty Fresh, Autumn Rain and Rose Scented formulas,
;)
GGG

The previous was a priceless ad for Gnome Removal Man Toilet Cleaner. No actual gnomes where harmed in the making of this ad as gnomes are imaginary creatures that don't really exist.... No. They don't.

Actually it was the trailer turned me off this movie. I have three reasons.

1. Logic - You're the king. Stay in your damn castle! There are any number of reasons that a ruling monarch might believably go to war on the front line, but most of them seem a bit thin.

2. Brand Recognition - The words (or implication of): "Based on the Popular Video Game" should be taken as a threat. The same goes for "Based on the Popular Independent Comic Book" (see Ultraviolet if you dare). Stuff like that should always leave you a bit leery about a movie, considering even the big names like Marvel (The Hulk, and Fantastic Four) and DC (Superman Returns) get it wrong on a semi-regular basis.

3. Dialog - Compare: Spartans, tonight we dine in Hell!, to Tonight we dress our wounds. If that was the best they could find to put in trailer then I'm pretty sure I'm passing.

To the point about a good cast; a few bad actors can kill a script, but usually in movies it's the other way around with the script killing the actors (see any given New Star Wars trilogy movie - but particularly Attack of the Clones if you don't believe me. Beautiful CG, suck-all writing).

So on adding them together (points 2 and 3 in particular) I found the trailer to be a bit weak.

I also completely understand the argument against piracy because it is theft, but as I look at the songs on my Ipod I realize I'm not really in a moral position to judge. also admitedlly those who do not download any form of media are. Guess this is just a "let he without sin cast the first stone moment."

Uhhh, I'll cast the first stone.

I own all my pdfs. And I kinda hope for my mortgage's sake you all own mine too. ;)

I'm thinking this might actually be an important product line for you game developers if we old farts are going to pass on the game to our kids and their friends.

Thanks,

I do too. In regards to an adventure might I recommend a couple of short 3.x Dungeon adventures that I thought had a good mix of fun, action, and role-playing sans an inordinate amount of violence; The Devil Box - by Sir Richard Pett, Palace of Plenty - by Tito Leati, Swords of the Dragonslake - by Nick Logue, Wingclipper's Revenge - by Chris Wissel, Melorn Hospitality - by Russ Brown, The Menagerie and Masque of Dreams by yours truly.

I don't have the issue numbers in front of me and am pressed for time so I can't list all the great adventures that appeared in Dungeon just the ones off the top of my head.

FOX News: Mr. Bush, though obviously your presidency was infinitely more trouble-free than the previous administration and the cloud of doubt that hung over it based on Bill Clinton's marital infidelity scandle, but what, if anything, did you see as a low water mark during your presidency?

Mr. Bush: Well, it was kinda funny when near the end of my second term two-hundred million Americans up and left for South Dakota. Pretty funny, John.

FOX News: It's Mike sir. And why do you think they did that Mr. Bush?

Mr. Bush: Obviously they were all terrorists.

FOX News: And the high point?

Mr. Bush: Pressing the red button. Though the payday the week after I left office was pretty good too. ::beems::

Thanks (I thought at first you may have been refering to the GameMastery module that Wolfgang Baur is writing, that involves a similarly tagged 'lost city' rather than "Masque of Dreams"). I love Tom Moldvay's B4: The Lost City. It's my favorite of the first four B Series books. Yes, even better than B2: Keep on the Boarderlands. There I said it and I'm glad. ;) The mix of combat, role-playing, and just plain fun is near perfect and all squeezed into 28 pages.

In case you haven't checked it out already go here to see the editing room clippings fit for looking at and an expanded take on the oasis. Oh, and did you notice Zargon got some loving in WotC's Elder Evils this month?

I think I restarted a trend,
Matt

PS And I should also mention that Mike Kaluta, James Ryman and Rob Lazzaretti make me look good in that issue. Thanks guys, you all need to be the official setting artists and cartographers for the Lost City.